Concept became reality when, In 1982, computers became common enough for Allen Stoltzfus, his brother, and brother-in-law to create the computerized language immersion programs known as Rosetta Stone. The company currently offers 31 different language systems.
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| theepochtimes.com |
The program allows users to learn a new language as they learned their native language. The technology became an excellent tool for travelers, both of business and pleasure, wanting to communicate with the native people they met while traveling.
For such a straight forward language tool, they sure have been cropping up in the news lately for many different reasons.
It started March 23rd.
The same day brought an additional announcement for the company. The software was going to be offered internationally; however, the success of this endeavor is pretty up in the air according to the MSNBCarticle by Ed Salwin of the Motley Fool.
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| 3.bp.blogspot.com |
It all sounds great, people of the world learning to communicate together and Japanese being taught to help victims of natural disasters. This was all wonderful news as far as I was concerned until red flags started going up on March 27 and 29. Class action lawsuits are being held against Rosetta Stone.
Izard Nobel LLP is a law firm representing the investors of Rosetta Stone. In a press release issued by Izard Noble, the situation is such: “Rosetta Stone and certain of its officers and directors violated federal securities laws.”
I’ll admit that I know little about law, and am often baffled by law terminology, but through the Izard Nobel press release the Case Complaint is available to the public, page 16 outlines Rosetta Stone’s biggest problem
During the Class Period, Defendants materially misled the investigating public, thereby inflating the price of Rosetta Stone common stock, by publicly issuing false and misleading statements and omitting to disclose material facts necessary to make Defendant’s statements, as set forth herein, not false and misleading. Said statements and omissions were materially false and misleading in that they failed to disclose material adverse information and misrepresented the truth about the Company, its business and operations, as alleged herein.
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| Mike Flanagan, Cartoonstock.com |
This essentially means, the people in charge are being investigated to see if they were honest about their financial situation during the most recent purchase period for stock.
It’s still up in the air for what will happen to the popular language learning software, but I thoroughly hope that these negative recent events will not prevent people from learning a new language and exploring someplace new.
After reading several of your posts and receiving what you would like comments on, I think you have already improved on that area. In your earlier posts your links and extra information seemed to support your topic but not add "extra". Now, however, I think the links in this article provide for supporting information as well as further information that your blog did not cover directly. I think that is a plus. Your blog now provides for several examples and different references for a surplus of information. Good Job. (I hope that's what you were looking for)
ReplyDeleteI really think you’re doing a great job of integrating sources; I read the article the first time without reading any sources and understood everything that you were talking about. Then I went through and read the sources and I thought they were really good because if I wanted to know in depth about any or all of them, the information was right there.
ReplyDeleteYou could do a future post on something like what technologies should you bring with you when you travel, or something like ways to limit your technology dependence when you travel (though I know you’ve sort of talked about this on other posts)
There’s another thing that I used to use all the time called Google 411—you could call it and get a phone number for any business place for free. I used it the most when I was looking for hours or prices of things. Google quit offering the service and I didn’t know why until I just searched it---apparently they want people to use their smart phones. But I don’t have a smart phone, so that’s really frustrating. However, this article I found (http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/money/consumer/dont_waste_your_money/google-dumps-free-411,-but-bing-steps-in) said that Microsoft Bing is offering the same service—I haven’t tried it, but I saved the number to my phone because I will seriously use it! So that could be a topic—you could also talk about things like texting Google (which I do sometimes for directions or definitions—but it’s a bit tricky because you have to type it in right for a good response)
As the above posters have stated, your intigration of sources is very good. I understood what your article was trying to convey, and the information was backed up when it was needed. Although some sort of image link/ citation would be good - I see copyright text in the cartoon, and the software pic has a pretty good citation, but The clip art of the stock chart should be cited.
ReplyDeleteSince this blog has mostly focused on airline travel, one possibility for a future blog entry would be American train travel and tech - what is Amtrak doing well/differently, and how is affecting travelers, etc.
As mentioned before by other commentators I do believe that you have greatly improved with your use of links and sources in your blog posts. The links really add to the blog and the link names aren't confusing. I feel that you choose both relevant and trustworthy sources and incorporate them into your blog nicely. Your blogs seem to flow well and are very interesting to read. I do agree with RJ though about citing any and all multimedia or images uses in your blogs. Even a simple website works :D
ReplyDeleteFor future topics may I suggest something about insurances that people should have on their technical instruments while traveling or something of that nature :D
Keep up the good work!